But at that moment the aye-aye came bounding through the branches and dropped to the ground beside them. Her eyes were wide with terror.
“There are men with uniforms riding toward us. I could see them coming over the hill. Many men — a whole army.” She began to whimper. “Men like that are bad — very bad. They have flags with many colors — green and yellow and blue, and foolish hats. When men have such silly clothes they are dangerous.”
“Oh heavens!” Mirella had put her hands over her mouth. “Those are my parents’ colors — they have them on the royal standard. They’ll have sent an army to fetch me away but I won’t go — I won’t go.”
“The drawbridge,” said Ivo. “We must pull up the drawbridge.”
The children ran as fast as their legs would carry them into the castle.
The Hag and the wizard were in the kitchen. They had heard nothing, but when they saw the children’s faces they wasted no time.
“Only Ulf has the strength to shift the bridge,” said the Hag. “He’s upstairs with the ogre.”
They ran upstairs and burst into the ogre’s bedroom. The ogre was dozing and Ulf was just covering him with a blanket.
“Ulf, come quickly — we’re being attacked. We must pull up the drawbridge.”
Ulf wasted no time. He pulled the blanket farther up on the bed, hoping that the ogre had not heard, and ran downstairs.
But the ogre had heard. The children were about to follow the troll downstairs when a great roar came from the bed. Then the blanket was thrown off, and after a few convulsions the ogre was on his feet.
“Oh be careful!” said Mirella — for the ogre had not been out of bed for days.
The ogre swayed and clutched the bedpost. He straightened himself. He flexed his biceps — and the bulge of muscle rolled down his arm and grew bigger and bulgier by the minute. He lifted one leg, and put it down. Then he lifted the other — and kicked a chair, which flew across the room.
“Attacking us, are they,” he roared. “Attacking Oglefort! Get me my club and my entrenching tool. And my trousers,” he added as an afterthought.
“Boiling oil,” said the Hag, looking around hopefully. “They used to pour boiling oil on invaders — but we don’t have any. Only salad oil and not much of that. And you two must go down into the dungeons and hide,” she ordered the children. “Mirella must keep out of sight.”
“Well I won’t. I’m going to fight with everything I can find,” said Mirella. “We can throw things off the battlements.”
It was ridiculous how little they had to defend themselves with — but it was hundreds of years since the castle had been attacked. Ivo had found some fire irons; Mirella grabbed a footstool. The wizard had seized a marble bust of Germania’s grandmother.
Ulf with all his might pulled up the chain which held the drawbridge in place. To get into Oglefort now, the invaders would have to swim the moat.
The army had been advancing steadily, and now it took up its position in front of the castle. It wasn’t quite the troop which had set out from Waterfield. It was, in fact, considerably smaller. Three members of the Royal Fusiliers had turned back when they saw the narrow bridge over the gorge which they had to cross. Two soldiers from the Household Guards had fled when a giant had come roaring out of a forest that they had to pass through, and the Soldiers of the Bedchamber were down to four very bedraggled-looking riders.
But the two princes who were married to Mirella’s sisters were still mounted — and leading the charge. Prince Phillipe on a black charger rode on the left flank. He had left his stamp collection at home and was waving his sword and shouting abuse. Prince Tomas, still sucking a peppermint, led the right flank. But Prince Umberto, who was meant to be at the head of the whole troop, had somehow managed to get to the back. He rode a gray stallion that was tossing his head and fidgeting because Umberto had no idea how to control him, and Umberto looked sick with fear.
“We come to kill the Ogre of Ogelfort,” shouted Prince Phillipe.
“And to free the Princess Mirella,” shouted Prince Tomas. “Open the gates!”
Prince Umberto didn’t shout anything because he was trembling too much, but Mirella, up on the roof, had caught sight of him.
“I’m going to be sick,” she said as the horror of his courtship came back to her, and she vanished behind a chimney stack on the other side of the ramparts.
The soldiers looked up at the castle. It was frighteningly large but there did not seem to be any cannons pointing in their direction. Prince Tomas gave a command and the archers laid their arrows to their bows. But before they could shoot, there came a mighty roar from the battlements. Then an enormous figure, hid-eous and hairy, his huge arms raised threateningly, appeared and glared down at them.
The riders shifted in their saddles. Prince Phillipe’s horse took a pace backward.
Silhouetted against the sky, the Ogre of Oglefort was a terrifying sight.
“How dare you try to invade my castle, you vile scum,” shouted the ogre. “I spit on you! I’m going to tear you limb from limb. I’m going to devour you toe by toe and ear by ear and nose by nose.”
He picked up a floor mop and hurled it into the mass of troops, and it dislodged a fusilier, who fell to the ground.
“I’m going to grind your guts like corn. I’m going to dig your tonsils into the ground.”
But if the soldiers were frightened, the children and the rescuers on the battlements were utterly amazed. An hour ago the ogre had been lying limply in his bed waiting for death — and now he was roaring and threatening. Surely he would have a heart attack and drop dead?
Prince Umberto, who was already right at the back, edged his horse farther away. It was as though the ogre’s power could somehow reach them even from the roof.
But Prince Phillipe and Prince Tomas were made of sterner stuff. They repeated the signal to the archers and a volley of arrows sped toward the towering figure on the roof.
The arrows missed — and the ogre picked one up and scratched his armpits with it. Then he looked around for a weapon and Ivo handed him a coal bucket, which he hurled with all his might into the army — and a member of the Household Guards cried out and fell to the ground. The troll had made a sling from a sheet. He put in a metal cooking pot and sent it flying toward the Soldiers of the Bedchamber. It glanced off a sergeant’s arm, and he cried out but managed to stay on his horse.
A second hail of arrows flew up to the roof — and missed again.
“Come on you, lily-livered, cow-handed imbeciles. How dare you attack Oglefort Castle, which has stood for five hundred years. Just you wait till I get down there and crunch you up between my molars.”
But one of the fusiliers had broken ranks and was setting his horse at the moat. He could not jump it, but he meant to swim it — and he shouted to his sergeant to bring reinforcements. If he could get into the castle by the back he had a good chance of rescuing the princess.
The horse, however, had different ideas. It stopped dead and the soldier shot over his head into the deep and slimy water.
Mirella, emerging from the shelter of the chimney stacks, looked down and remembered what Bessie had said about the weeds in the moat. Well if the soldier drowned that was one less for the attack. But as the fusilier’s anguished face appeared above the surface and vanished again she saw, to her horror, that it was somebody she knew. One of the servants who had been kind to her in the palace: the son of the carpenter who had helped her to make her ant nest.
Without thinking, Mirella rushed down the curving stone staircase and out by the sally port. There was an old life belt fixed by a rope on a stand, and she threw it with all her might into the water.
“Go back,” she shouted. “The ogre will kill you if you come any farther.”